Diary of a Drug Fiend

308 The Diary of a Drug Fiend action. Compare the soft-flowing winds with the inflexible rock. We breath those winds into our lungs to-day—the air is as fresh as ever. But see how those temples and strongholds, nay, the very crags themselves, have been worn down by the languorous caresses of this invigorating breeze. That is one of the reasons why I came to live here, though one hardly needs support after one glance at the incomparable beauty of the place; a beauty which varies every day and never tires. Look at the sunset every night. It is good for two hours of grand opera. It is almost stupefying to sit on the terrace of the villa and watch the ever- changing glories of night-fall. And night itself! There stands the Pole Star over the rock. As the months move the Great Bear wheels about its stable splendour, and one’s mind begins to work on a totally different scale of time. Each revolution of the heavens about the Pole is like the second hand of one’s spiritual watch.”’ We listened with enthralled attention. The beauty of the place beat hard upon our brains. It was un- believable. Patches of cancer. like London and Paris were cut ruthlessly out of our consciousness. We had come from the ephemeral pretentiousness of cities to a land of eternal actuality. We were re-born into a world whose every condition was on a totally different scale to anything in our experience. A sense of innocence pervaded us. It was as if we had awakened from a nightmare; our sense of time and space had been destroyed; but we knew that our old standards of reality had been delusions. Clocks and watches were mechanical toys. In Telepylus, our time-keeper was the Nature of which we were part. We walked on for another five minutes; but again weakness overcame us. The scenery was blotted out by the persistent ache for heroin. We satisfied the craving, but the act now seemed abominable. There was no one to see us; and yet we felt as if Nature herself were offended by the presence of a monstrosity. _ “T’ll go on to the Abbey,” said Lamus. ‘‘ You’d better